Chapter 3, Mishnah 7 of Maseches Horayos. In the previous Mishnah we dealt with the laws of precedence and the priorities within them, and here we have a Mishnah dealing with what we would call today 'triage' - sorting and setting an order of priority. What happens in a difficult situation in which a person is called upon to do good, but the resources at his disposal are not sufficient for everyone involved? Who receives priority?
It should be said at the outset: whatever the answer may be, it is bound to cause discomfort. And so it should be, because it means that there are people who are left behind. But we are speaking of a nightmarish situation in which there is no choice, and the resources or opportunities are limited. In such a situation, how is the order of priority determined?
The starting point - whoever is holier takes precedence:
The foundation here is what we learned in the previous Mishnah: whoever is holier than his fellow takes precedence. And as we saw there in the comparison between the chatas and the olah, the definers of holiness are a broad range of considerations: the blood of the chatas comes before the blood of the olah, because the blood atones for more things and for more severe transgressions; while the limbs of the olah come before the burned portions of the chatas, because with the olah the entire animal is burned, unlike the chatas, of which only a part is burned.
Saving lives and returning lost property - the man comes first:
"Lehachayos" - if it is possible to save only one person's life, whose life do we save? The answer is that "ha'ish kodem la'ishah" - the man comes before the woman, because the man is obligated in more mitzvos than the woman, and therefore he is technically holier.
"Lehashiv aveidah" - at first glance this seems like a small matter in the context of this Mishnah, but one who examines the sugya will see that returning lost property means safeguarding the property of one's fellow Jew in every sense, and not merely returning a lost object, but rescuing it from any loss. Therefore, if it is possible to save only one person's property, the man comes first, because he is the holier one.
Providing needs - the woman comes first:
In contrast, when we are not dealing with someone who is dying, Heaven forbid, but with the question of providing for their needs. The Mishnah uses the term "kesus" - clothing, but the principle applies to any kind of fulfilling a need, including the need for food. In such a case the woman comes first.
The reason: here the question is not one of life and death, Heaven forbid, but of the degree of emotional suffering. And since women are more distressed, more uncomfortable and more embarrassed by the need to knock on doors and ask for support, therefore if we have only one coat available for a man or a woman, we give it to the woman, and the man will go and knock on the doors.
The same halachah will apply in any parallel situation:
If there are two orphans and only one of them can be taken in, the girl is taken in first.
If there is money to sustain only one person in terms of food, the woman receives the food, and so on.
Redeeming captives:
The same applies to redemption from captivity: when it comes to ransoming someone from prison or from captors, the woman takes precedence over the man. The reason: we are concerned that the woman may be violated by her captors, and if that happens, her suffering will be far more severe than that of a man who is physically abused by his captors. Priority is therefore given to the woman, in order to get her out of there as quickly as possible - again, in a situation where the resources or the opportunity suffice to save only one of them.
"Bizman sheshneihem omdim lekalkalah":
The Mishnah says, however, that if both the captive man and the captive woman are facing sexual exploitation - "ha'ish kodem la'ishah" - the man takes precedence over the woman. The reason is that being abused in this way is an even greater nightmare and humiliation for a man than for a woman, because it is entirely unnatural. It is as much of a nightmare as it is for the woman, and worse still for the man.
An important clarification in closing:
It must be made clear that our entire discussion here concerns a situation in which a person is doing only good things and is doing nothing wrong at all - it is simply that he is unable to do all the good he would like to do. But if, for example, someone points a gun at a person's head and says to him: either you kill this woman or we kill you - it would be a complete mistake to think that since the Mishnah has just ruled that when one can save either a man or a woman one saves the man, he is therefore permitted to kill the woman. Heaven forbid. A person is never permitted to do such a thing, and the law is "yehareg ve'al ya'avor" - one must be killed rather than transgress: the person being threatened must die and take the bullet rather than kill the woman.
The point of our Mishnah is that the person is doing nothing wrong whatsoever; he is doing the right thing: he has only one life preserver in his hand and two drowning people in front of him - to whom should he throw it? There is no suggestion here of drowning one person in order to save another, Heaven forbid.